Nagorno-Karabakh: in Kelbadjar, residents erase their traces and take their dead

Audio 01:09

After the cease-fire, one of the first territories of Nagorno-Karabakh is to come under Azerbaijani control.

The inhabitants erase all traces of their passage and take everything they can with them.

Alexander NEMENOV / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

After six weeks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a full ceasefire agreement on November 9.

Five days later, one of the first territories of Nagorno-Karabakh must come under Azerbaijani control and the inhabitants erase all traces of their passage.

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With our special correspondent in Kelbadja

,

Anissa El Jabri  

In one of the villages in this district there is a smell of burning among the rubble, but this has nothing to do with the scars of the war.

The fighting did not reach this village near the Armenian border.

In Kelbadjar, it is the inhabitants who burn their houses and all traces of their passage.

We are going to burn and destroy the registers with the numbers and addresses, the photocopies of the passports of the customers, because here you see it is the bank of the State of Nagorno-Karabakh

 ", explains a resident.

Noraïr is back from the front line, demobilized in the first twenty-four hours.

This father returned immediately to the land he must leave: " 

We dig up our dead, so that history does not repeat itself, so that our cemeteries are not destroyed by the Azerbaijanis as they did by the past.

I myself have just unearthed my son's coffin.

 "

With his hands still full of dirt, Norair opens the trunk of his car, under a pallet and a shovel, the wooden coffin of his deceased child.

In these territories which will come under Azerbaijani control, many of them leave with their dead to bring them back

to Armenia

.

To listen: End of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh: the inhabitants of the region between uncertainty and anger

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  • Armenia

  • Azerbaijan

  • Nagorno-Karabakh

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